Part 4: Things He Doesn’t Want to Carry Anymore
New Iberia, Louisiana – October 2005
Thomas Rourke stood in the backyard with the leash in one hand and the photograph in the other. His face was soaked—not from rain, but from the kind of crying men his age never planned on doing. Jasper pressed against his leg, tail low, eyes searching.
Drew opened the gate wider, like it was the most natural thing in the world. No fear. No hesitation. Just a child who had decided to trust an old man with a heavy heart.
“You came back,” Drew whispered to Jasper.
The dog gave one short wag, then limped forward and laid his head in the hole Drew had dug beneath the oak tree.
The boy crouched beside him and nodded solemnly. “You can put your stuff here.”
Thomas looked to Anna, unsure.
She crossed the yard slowly, arms folded tight against the chill. “He started calling it the Memory Hole,” she said. “Said it’s for things Jasper doesn’t want to carry anymore.”
Thomas lowered himself carefully to his knees. His fingers trembled as he placed the photograph in the hole, face down. Then he pulled something from his coat pocket—a smooth, pale stone, like a river pebble.
“My wife used to keep this on the windowsill,” he murmured. “Said it was Jasper’s lucky stone. He used to nudge it when he wanted to go outside.”
He placed it gently next to the picture.
Drew added a small drawing—crayon lines of a boy and a dog under a sky that was half sun, half stars.
No one said anything after that.
They just sat beside the hole in the earth, letting go.
That afternoon, Thomas didn’t go back to his porch.
He stayed with the Sullivans.
Caleb pulled out the old metal chairs from the garage. Anna brought sweet tea, still lukewarm from the power outage. Drew ran inside to fetch Jasper’s blanket, and laid it out on the deck for the dog to stretch in the sun.
Thomas watched Drew carefully. Like he was afraid to blink and miss something holy.
“You ever had kids?” Anna asked quietly.
Thomas shook his head. “We tried. Miscarried twice. Cancer came soon after. Jasper was our… everything.”
Drew tossed a ball gently toward Jasper, who swatted it with a paw but didn’t chase.
“He doesn’t really play,” the boy said. “But I think maybe he likes watching.”
Thomas nodded. “He’s always been a watcher.”
That night, over dinner, Anna brought up the unspoken.
“So… what do we do?”
Thomas looked up from his plate. “About Jasper?”
Anna nodded.
“He loves your boy,” Thomas said. “That much is clear.”
“And he loves you.”
Thomas gave a sad little smile. “We don’t always know what to do with love when it changes shape.”
Caleb set down his fork. “He came back for a reason. But he stayed for another.”
There was silence after that.
Then Drew, with peanut butter on his cheek, asked, “Can we both keep him?”
Thomas blinked. “You mean—what, take turns?”
Drew shrugged. “Maybe he lives in the middle. Like, he walks back and forth. When he wants.”
It was the kind of solution only a child could offer. So simple it sounded like truth.
Thomas chuckled. “A shared dog.”
Drew grinned. “He’s got enough love for two houses.”
Later, when the house had quieted and the crickets started their nighttime chorus, Anna stood by the window watching Jasper sleep on their back porch.
He had his paw over the red leash.
Like he didn’t need it anymore—but wasn’t quite ready to let it go.
Part 5: A Dog in the Middle
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New Iberia, Louisiana – November 2005
It began with Jasper deciding where to sleep.
Some nights, he curled beside Drew’s bed, his breathing steady and deep, as if he’d been there all along. Other nights, they’d open the back door and find the red leash missing, only to see it the next morning—looped around the railing of Thomas Rourke’s porch like a ribbon on a mailbox.
“He leaves it for us,” Thomas said one morning, cradling a chipped coffee mug. “So we know where his heart landed that night.”
Caleb chuckled. “That dog’s more polite than most people I know.”
It became a rhythm.
Jasper in the middle.
Two houses, two porches, one long fence with a crooked plank that Thomas eventually removed to make a kind of dog door between yards. Drew called it “Jasper’s Way.”
“Like a hallway for feelings,” he explained.
And somehow, it was.
By Thanksgiving, neighbors had noticed.
A few asked about the old man who now laughed more often, or the little boy who talked to the air less and to the world more. One curious neighbor asked Anna directly: “Is that the same stray that showed up weeks ago?”
Anna nodded. “Not a stray anymore.”
One afternoon, Drew tugged on Thomas’s sleeve.
“Do you think dogs remember people when they die?”
Thomas paused. “What makes you ask that, buddy?”
“I had a dream Jasper was sitting on clouds, looking for someone. I think it was your wife.”
Thomas sat down slowly on the grass, heart hitching in his chest.
Drew looked up at him. “Do you think she found him first, after the storm?”
Thomas swallowed hard. “Maybe. But maybe he came back for someone else who needed him, too.”
Drew tilted his head. “Me?”
Thomas nodded. “You.”
That night, Thomas brought over an old music box.
“It was hers,” he told Anna. “Used to sit on our dresser. Played this funny little tune—always made Jasper howl when it hit the high notes.”
He wound it up and set it on the windowsill near Drew’s sandbox.
Sure enough, Jasper lifted his head, ears perked, and gave a low, rumbling yawn that twisted into the softest, most mournful howl.
It wasn’t sad, exactly.
Just full.
Full of memory.
Full of things too big for words.
Later, Drew sat by the sandbox, his fingers trailing through the sand.
He whispered something to Jasper.
Thomas, sitting nearby, asked, “What did you say?”
“I told him he’s like the bridge. He keeps everything from falling apart.”
Thomas looked at the boy.
And something in him cracked.
The kind of crack that lets light in.
That night, Jasper stayed on the grass between the two houses.
Didn’t go inside.
Didn’t move much.
Just rested there, leash beneath his chin, halfway across the path they’d made for him.
As if saying: I belong to both. I’m where I’m needed. And right now, that’s here.
Part 6: The Music Box and the Howl
New Iberia, Louisiana – Late November 2005
The music box played three times a day.
Drew insisted on it—once after breakfast, once before his afternoon nap, and once just before the stars came out. Each time, he’d wind it carefully, set it on the edge of the sandbox, and sit beside Jasper with the reverence of someone attending a church service.
The melody was slow, lilting—part lullaby, part memory. Jasper never moved when it played. His eyes would go soft, faraway. And near the final few notes, like clockwork, he would lift his head and release a low, trembling howl.
Not a cry of pain.
Something else.
Something from the marrow.
And each time, Thomas would pause whatever he was doing—whether sipping coffee, whittling wood, or simply standing still—and close his eyes.
Anna watched it all from the window.
She kept a notebook on the counter now, next to the flour jar. At the top, she’d written: Things Drew Understands That I Don’t Yet. Each page filled quickly—dreams, sayings, drawings, questions. Today’s entry:
“Maybe when you die, the love you leave behind finds a shape.”
She hadn’t asked him what it meant. Not yet.
She wasn’t sure she was ready for the answer.
On the first real cold morning of the season, Thomas brought over a quilt—old, fraying, faded with lavender print.
“It was hers,” he said. “She used to wrap Jasper in it during storms.”
He draped it gently over the dog as he lay sunbathing on the Sullivan’s porch.
Drew stepped out with a bowl of warm broth.
“He didn’t eat much this morning,” he said, voice tight.
Thomas nodded slowly. “He’s tired.”
Drew didn’t ask what kind of tired. Some part of him already knew.
That night, Jasper didn’t leave the porch.
Not for Thomas.
Not for Drew.
He stayed wrapped in the lavender quilt, breathing slow and shallow.
Drew refused to go to bed.
He sat beside the dog with the music box in his lap.
“Just one more time,” he whispered.
He wound it.
Set it down.
The melody floated out into the chill.
And halfway through—no howl.
Just silence.
Drew blinked.
Looked at Jasper.
Still breathing. But barely.
The boy turned to Anna, eyes wide. “He didn’t sing.”
Thomas came over with a flashlight and a folded letter in his jacket.
“I wrote something,” he said. “For when it’s time.”
Caleb swallowed hard. “Do you want to read it now?”
Thomas shook his head. “No. Not yet. But I wanted to keep it near him. Just in case.”
He handed it to Drew.
“You’re the keeper of his treasures now,” he said softly.
Drew took it with two hands, like it might shatter.
Then he placed it gently in the Memory Hole beneath the oak, next to the pinecone and the photo.
Later that night, the wind kicked up.
The music box played its tune—unwound, this time, by no one.
And just before the final note, there it was.
A single, soft howl from the porch.
No one knew who started crying first.
But they all stayed close after that.